The origins of human pictorial behavior are obscure, but a few hypotheses exist to explain our seemingly unique impulse toward representation and aesthetic behavior. A convenient outline of the evidence for a biological basis for art,2 as well as its proposed explanations, has been assembled by David P. Barash.3
Quoting Brian Boyd,4 Barash defends an evolutionary role for art:
(1) it is universal in human societies; (2) it has persisted over several thousand generations; (3) despite a vast number of actual and possible combinations of behavior in all known human societies, art has the same major forms…in all; (4) it often involves high costs in time, energy and resources; (5) it stirs strong emotions, which are evolved indicators that something matters to an organism; (6) it develops reliably in all normal humans without special training, unlike purely cultural products such as reading, writing, or science.5
The “art-drive,” omnipresent in human society, must therefore play an important biological role.
Or does it? At least one origin theory disparages art as at best, frivolous, and, at worst, dangerous. According to the “cheesecake” theory, humans have developed pleasure technologies to specifically trigger our gratifying adaptive responses to certain stimuli: humans designed cheesecake to be sweet and creamy, just like the highly valuable ripe fruits and fats we evolved to favor. Unfortunately, due to our unprecedented access to the dessert and the extra calories it affords, our preference for it has become maladaptive. Proponents of this theory argue that art functions in the same way. We developed it to serve as a super-stimuli to trigger pleasurable sensations, but ultimately it does not fulfill any specific biological function, and may, like cheesecake, actually reduce fitness.6
Luckily for those of us who have devoted much of our lives to artistic endeavors, there are other origin theories that ascribe an adaptive role to the arts. One that figures prominently in not only human developmental theory, but any discussion of non-human primate pictorial behavior, is “art as play.” Again summarizing Boyd, Barash notes that
art…inspires cognitive processing of complex information patterns and is therefore good for us; moreover, it does so in a context that—for all its seriousness—is nonetheless one step removed from the real world, thereby allowing a greater margin for error while giving free reign to imagination and experimentation.7
In this way, art and play are indistinguishable from one another; they are both decoupled from the real world, each involves cognitive and physical engagement, and they both aid the development of skills.
Complementing the “art as play” hypothesis, the “byproduct” theory is a commonsensical supposition: our big brains are so efficient at getting us the things we need, we can afford to spend more time on seemingly trivial matters. Our art, according to this hypothesis, is a byproduct of the extra time and excess capacity. Interestingly, although it may not have originated as an adaptive trait, it may have quickly been co-opted into an important adaptive role: protecting us from the dangerous side effect of a too-efficient brain, boredom.8
Worth mentioning here is yet another complementary theory, this one by Desmond Morris, famed zoologist: “Art is making the extraordinary out of the ordinary – to entertain the brain.”9 Morris contends that art is an elaboration on the merely practical, and was built upon necessary activities, such as the construction of shelter, weapons, or clothing. And more than that, the activity itself seems to be intrinsically rewarding.
The next art-as-adaptation hypothesis is beholden to that creator of excesses, sexual selection. While natural selection tends to prune away superfluous or energy intensive characteristics, sexual selection can explain traits that seem immoderate or even imprudent: the train of a peacock, or the twelve foot wide, eighty-eight pound antlers of the Irish elk.10 Much like the peacock’s tail, it is thought, the brain and its products are expensive for a human to grow and maintain, and therefore excellent indicators of reproductive fitness.
These origin stories of art are not without their pitfalls, as you might expect when respected experts in one field attempt to define another. One recurrent theme is the belittling of artists and art scholars. Barash undermines the import of what is considered to be art, and the people who study it, by introducing a case study: “Most famous, or infamous, is Duchamp’s ‘Fountain,’ a urinal that he called art and that art lovers and art scholars have wrestled with, unsuccessfully, for nearly a century.”11 The suggestion seems to be that art historians and theorists have been unable to assimilate this particular artwork into the canon, bringing the whole enterprise to a standstill. A strange assertion, given that art and art theory have continued unabated, even after 1917.12
2 Broadly defined by Barash as encompassing music, dance, and visual art.
3 Barash, David P. Homo Mysterious: Evolutionary Puzzles of Human Nature. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Print.
4 Boyd, Brian. “On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction.” Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009. Print.
5 Barash, p. 148.
6 Barash, p. 149-152.
7 Barash, p. 169-170.
8 Barash, p. 155-156.
9 Morris, Desmond. The Artistic Ape. London: Red Lemon Press, 2013. Print. p. 12.
10 Perhaps unsurprisingly, extinct. A beautiful articulated specimen is held by Amherst College’s Beneski Museum of Natural History.
11 Barash, p. 150.
12 Perhaps more worrisome than a disregard for art theory is one of the proofs Barash offers for the sexual selection theory of art’s origin, sexual asymmetry:
On the one hand, the fact that there are so many more ‘great masters’ than ‘great mistresses’ in every major artistic discipline is consistent with the sexual selection hypothesis, since males—sperm makers, and therefore capable of inseminating many females—would be more strongly selected to be sexual/artistic/creative show-offs than would females, who are egg makers and thus less able to transfer sociosexual success into a large Darwinian reproductive payoff. (p.189)
While he later goes on to qualify this statement, (p.190) the implication is not that historically there have been more great male artists than female, it is that even now that “the cultural prohibitions against women’s artistic creativity have fallen”(p.190) there are still fewer women of consequence.